Night Fever. Tori Carrington

living room from the kitchen. The coiled tension in her muscles nearly singed his palms.

      Then again, that could be the result of a sexual tension so strong that it had her on fire. The question was, would it be so overpowering he’d get burned?

      “Wine. Red. How about we start with that?”

      She allowed him to sit her down on a wood bar stool, but he suspected that was more because she wasn’t up to fighting him than because of any real desire to sit. She glanced at her watch. “You know, I shouldn’t even be here. We’ve both got…”

      “Shh,” he said, noticing that her hand was trembling slightly. “A little wine never hurt anybody.”

      Then a bath. Yes, definitely a bath. He could already see her stretched out in his whirlpool, bubbles foaming around her sexy shoulders.

      He opened the pantry door, then the refrigerator and looked around on top of the counter before he remembered he had one of those wine-cooler things under the cabinet she sat at. He chose a bottle from a selection someone else had stocked, then turned to find a corkscrew, all the while aware of her watching him and looking around the open living area, her eyes growing narrower.

      “Got it,” he said, finally locating a newfangled corkscrew from a drawer filled with cooking accessories.

      He poured a portion into a glass he blew into first and then he tried to hand it to her. But she was holding up her hand and getting up from the stool.

      “Whoa. What’s going on here?”

      Sam took the wine back, holding the glass to his chest. “How do you mean?”

      “Well, for starters, the pink and red pillows on your sofa? No man would ever pick those out.” She frowned. “At least no man interested in women.”

      He looked at the decorative pillows she was referring to, admitting she had a point. He certainly would never have chosen them.

      She was gesturing with her hand as she backed up toward the door. “You didn’t even know you had a wine cooler, for God’s sake. And the corkscrew…” Her neck snapped straight. “Only a married man doesn’t know where everything is in his own house.”

      Sam grimaced, not liking where this was heading. “Or a man who just recently moved into a house, doesn’t spend a whole helluva lot of time in it, had a professional see to the decorating and has a housekeeper who comes in a couple of hours in the morning and stocks everything when he’s not here.”

      The wariness hadn’t left her eyes, but at least she’d stopped moving backward.

      He casually rounded the counter and came to stand in front of her.

      She brushed the loose strands of her dark hair back from her face. “I’m…sorry. It’s just…”

      He held out the glass again. “Hey, no apologies necessary. More people should be so cautious.”

      She accepted the glass and drank slowly from it.

      “Speaking of caution, did you bring condoms?”

      LAYLA nearly spewed the mellow Merlot all over the front of his white polo shirt.

      Oh, that would be cute. She fingered her lips as she took him in. Had she ever met a man as charmingly disarming as Sam? One minute he seemed to be insulting her. The next he made a comment so bawdily sexy and funny that she wanted to laugh and strip her clothes off at the same time.

      Never mind that his grin did sizzling things to her nerve endings.

      He slid his hands into his jeans pockets then shrugged. “’Cause, you know, if you didn’t, I don’t want you to be shocked that I have them on hand.”

      Not only was he not exasperated by her moronic behavior, he was going out of his way to help her relax. Not many men were capable of doing that. Then again, she was coming to see that Sam wasn’t like many other men.

      She glanced over the living room again, noting that it did have that new, unlived-in feeling about it. Even the magazines on the coffee table looked untouched. And the plants artfully placed around the room were all silk.

      “You know,” Sam was saying, “You should feel privileged. I don’t invite many women back to my place. And on the first date…well, virtually unheard of.”

      Layla smiled widely. “Privileged, huh?”

      “Mmm. Yeah, some women get weird when you let them through the door of your house. You’re not going to get weird on me, are you, Dr. Hollister?”